Outskirts Press, INC.

Elevate your mind.

I was born in the Brownville section of Brooklyn, New York in the early fifties. The oldest of three children born to David and Mildred Hicks. My memories of life in those early times were so amazing until I started school; that when I found out that I wasn’t just a child but a negro boy. To call someone in the neighborhood “black” would cause a fight; remember negro people on the majority did not embraced their “blackness” until 1969 when James Brown record “Say it loud. I’m black and I’m proud.” The other influence on my life expressed in my poetry attribute to ShaSha who isn’t a poet but one of the first nine born of the “Five Percent Nation”, who in the fall of 1967 started my education of myself in P.S.20 Park. The Poets that inspired my writing are Langston Hughes, Niki Giovanni, The last Poets, Gil Scott Heron and Maya Angelou. My Poetry that you may now read upon has been a request of my deceased brother’s wishes for me to publish my poems, so the first hopefully not my last book of poems is dedicated to my deceased brother David Hicks.